1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to signal processing and multimedia applications, and more specifically but not exclusively, to methods and apparatus for fast audio search and audio fingerprinting.
2. Description
Audio search (e.g., searching a large audio stream for an audio clip, even if the large audio stream is corrupted/distorted) has many applications including analysis of broadcast music/commercials, copyright management over the Internet, or finding metadata for unlabeled audio clips, and etc. A typical audio search system is serial and designed for single processor systems. It normally takes a long time for such a search system to search for a target audio clip in a large audio stream. In many cases, however, an audio search system is required to work efficiently on large audio databases, e.g., to search large databases in a very short time (e.g., close to real-time). Additionally, an audio database may be partially or entirely distorted, corrupted, and/or compressed. This requires that an audio search system be robust enough to identify those audio segments that are the same as the target audio clip, even if those segments may be distorted, corrupted, and/or compressed. Thus, it is desirable to have an audio search system which can quickly and robustly search large audio databases for a target audio clip.